The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert Quotes

“The paper is patient, but the reader is not.”
― Joseph Joubert, The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert: A Selection

“The breath of the mind is attention 128”
― Joseph Joubert, The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert: A Selection

“It is not my words that I polish, but my ideas. 102”
― Joseph Joubert, The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert: A Selection

“Few minds are spacious; few even have an empty place in them or can offer some vacant point. Almost all have narrow capacities and are filled by some knowledge that blocks them up. What a torture to talk to filled heads, that allow nothing from the outside to enter them! A good mind, in order to enjoy itself and allow itself to enjoy others, always keeps itself larger than its own thoughts. And in order to do this, these thoughts must be given a pliant form, must be easily folded and unfolded, so that they are capable, finally, of maintaining a natural flexibility.

All those short-sighted minds see clearly within their little ideas and see nothing in those of others; they are like those bad eyes that see from close range what is obscure and cannot perceive what is clear from afar. Night minds, minds of darkness.”
― Joseph Joubert, The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert: A Selection

“Everything has its poetry. 94”
― Joseph Joubert, The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert: A Selection

“Through memory we travel against time, through forgetfulness we follow its course.”
― Joseph Joubert, The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert: A Selection

“Those for whom the world is not enough: saints, conquerors, poets, and all lovers of books.”
― Joseph Joubert, The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert: A Selection

“Tenderness is the repose of passion.”
― Joseph Joubert, The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert: A Selection

“The soul paints itself in our machines.”
― Joseph Joubert, The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert: A Selection

“Figure, movement. Everything happens, says Pascal, from figure and movement. To say in this case that everything happens from movement, for every figure is no more than the lingering trace of a movement that has already ceased. Thus the letters that I am forming now, for example, are only the pen's lingering trace of the movement of my hand.”
― Joseph Joubert, The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert: A Selection

“Tenderness is the repose of passion. — Joseph Joubert, The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert. (NYRB Classics; Main edition May 10, 2005) Originally published October 1983.”
― Joseph Joubert, The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert: A Selection